Some More Images Of The Thylacine You Have Probably Never Seen Before

“In the collection stores of the Australian Museum is this beautiful specimen which has kept its vibrant fur thanks to minimal exposure to light or touch. As our Manager, Programs Matt put it, “Pulling the drawer open is an awe-inspiring, solemn and shameful experience.”

From The Australian Museum on Facebook.

Newly rediscovered footage of the last captive thylacine (“Benjamin”) as a juvenile at the Beaumaris Zoo has just been released!

The film is 7 seconds long and was taken by Reverend Harold Doyle in 1930 using a hand-cranked camera and nitrate film.

Though it is not as clear as other films, it is still valuable because it gives us more information about the timeline of the last captive and possibly his origin, which have long been disputed.

A looping version of the film can be seen here: https://www.ntnews.com.au/news/newly-discovered-footage-of-the-thylacine/video/9739dac68568a2d9d758c857a1417ae1

Wait wait!!! The skin doesn't quite match up and we really need more photos of the specimen to match it with Benjamin!

The article is confusing I'll admit 😭

THEY FOUND BENJAMIN’S REMAINS!?!?!??!?!?

Angela Gram (American, 1985) - Endling (2022)

In these pictures, the Swedish Museum of Natural History’s exquisite adult female thylacine wet specimen has been removed from her jar for a 3D scan. Dr. Justin Williams used an Artec Space Spider scanner to image this specimen in submillimeter 3D.

Dr. Williams and his team scanned thylacine specimens from a total of 18 institutions for their research project, which aimed to determine the true size of the thylacine. Their publication is titled: “Did the thylacine violate the costs of carnivory? Body mass and sexual dimorphism of an iconic Australian marsupial.” [x]

Thylacine By: W. S. Berridge From: A History of Land Mammals in the Western Hemisphere 1913

thylacines made good pets?? ;_; they do look like they'd feel soft and glossy to the touch. I'm obsessed with tassie devils, myself, but I'm resigned that they may go extinct before I can travel far enough to see them. I wish I could pet one.

They were obviously not domesticated to the level of having domestication syndrome features (not that I'm sure a marsupial animal *would*), but there are historical records of Tasmanians who kept them as pets, including both white settlers and indigenous people.

Thylacines were somewhat prone to capture myopathy (a stress reaction that causes some animals to die if trapped/captured) and sometimes died after capture, but many did not. If the animals were treated kindly they would generally respond well to attempts to tame them, and this was even more true of orphaned baby thylacines that were raised by humans. There are several stories of people who tamed thylacines very shortly after capture. One such thylacine was let go when she went into season and became restless, and she later introduced her pups to the man she had lived with.

Indigenous people were recorded as having kept them. One indigenous informant stated that they called them "stripey dogs" when they spoke English.

One of my favourite stories was of a white settler family had a large house and kept their thylacine on an extremely long chain in the front so that she could act as a sort of watchdog. This thylacine would watch over the children playing and did not react violently to them even if she was accidentally hit by a ball (she knew that this was an accident) and would give warning of anyone approaching.

The likely reason that thylacines did not become popular household companions was the hate campaign that sprung up around them, stating that they were sheep killers. Once that got to be a big issue and bounties were offered for killing them, people who were taming and raising the animals frequently found them killed, and they gave up on it.

Many of these stories are in Robert Paddle's book, which is an academic study but is extremely readable.

Thought y'all might enjoy this.

I used an app to recolor black and white photos of thylacines.

They are friends

(idk when yellow footed rock wallabies first broke off into an individual species, but perhaps Thylacinus Cynocephalus was on the mainland then)

Also I found the resource I've been looking for to make that art project of thylacinid family tree.